Soshima - Connecting is New Selling! . : : . custom social media solution for your business . : : .

I know. This is not a new topic. People have been debating since Google+ launched. I have FB account & visit everyday, I also have Google+, but rarely look at it sine only one friend using it, who is my Fiance?!

My two cents of comparison---

Users number---
Facebook: 800 millions
Google+: 40 millions (given it only launched 2nd half 2011, this performance has been amazing)

User gender---
Facebook: Equally distributed, Male 51%, Female 49%
Google+: Male skewed, Male 71% (I bet they are all someone a bit geeky like my fiance), Female 29%

Group---

Daily deals are part of our lives now. A lot of us have gone over the excitement at the very beginning, but now just want to use them to work for us in a very simple way. It’s like a marriage, passing through the thrill in early dates, turning into more practical everyday life.

However, Daily deal is yet a very young industry, a lot of entrepreneurs still trying to identify different opportunities to dive in. It’s still a gold mine.

There are of course plenty of flaws and frustrations---

Yes, again, Daily deals.

From my last blog post about daily deals, the waves have been even stronger than before. Honestly, I love the deals. Why not? I myself have been a loyal customers of the daily deals site, purchased more than 30 deals and enjoyed at least half of them. Some of my friends are also deal lovers, and we can try new restaurants together & some activities. It's great!

In the last 5 years I valuated at least 30 - 40 different email marketing and newsletter systems. From big guys such as Responsys to smaller providers such as Brandmail.

I ended up suing around 10 and sent around to 16M emails in the last few years. Yes, email marketing is big part of my marketing strategy and ALWAYS created great, quick cash flow for companies I was working for.

Groupon is getting ready for the China launch very soon and aggressively expressed that it wanted to dominate China market Group buying scene.

I have a few questions for Groupon:

1. No idea why Groupon use "Tibet" in the story for the Superbowl ad. right before China launch, any reasons?

I admit these days, if I can solve any banking easily online, I won't want to go to any of the branches to get my ticket and wait my number to be called.

I admit that it is kinda of difficult for bank employees to have the opportunities to cross sell or upsell any products or services to me since I don't talk to them.

I admit it's not easy to sell something to someone who don't want them.

On this Monday morning, sipping coffee, I read the news from "DailyDeal Media" about "bad daily deal cause uproar" (http://www.dailydealmedia.com/bad-daily-deal546-causes-uproar/).

Since when? Always.

From the time that Google decided to leave China & divert all traffic to HK, I was telling myself "it can't be right. they will be back."

China has 1.3bn people. It is a huge market for Google, for most companies, it's just hard to let it go.

However, the organisation's continuing problems with the "great firewall of China", which limits access to online information. The recent awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo, can never be found on any search engine in China.

How will Google cope with this?

When I was doing the research of communities, I chatted with the community members. I felt their emotions, the interesting relationship among them was incredible.

I now also belong to one beauty community. Before I joined, I doubted if I would stay long. However, after a few posts, I can't stop myself anymore.

The energy, the caring, the generousness through the community moved me...

That's the beauty of the Internet and the people, isn't it?!

There are many social media theories flying around these days. It's new (comparing to traditional media) with a unique point of "participation" from outsiders, hence it's so interesting.

More and more companies give social media increasing weight in their marketing mix, due to the nature of the brand and products, the approach varies to certain degrees.

If using B2C or B2B business as example, B2C services try to leverage the spirit of the consumers, or say evangelists. On the other hand, B2B services use more of their own staff to keep the momentum.